by Carol Arens
This mysterious weight might shed some light on what he was seeking. Perhaps someone who would rather laze about than perform their duties was hiding inside.
He dashed towards the lifeboat, not an easy thing to do on a wet, rolling deck. Every instinct told him he would find someone whose employment would be terminated when he tossed back the tarp.
He gripped the canvas, yanked it open.
‘What—?’ His fist went slack, but his heart squeezed at the sight of a woman curled in the bottom of the boat.
Not just any woman, but the angelic beauty he had ordered the Captain to escort on board.
What could have happened to her since he last saw her going into the dining room?
‘Collier!’ he shouted, knowing he would not be heard, but needing a release for his anger. Had the Captain not found her proper shelter and left her to fend for herself?
‘Miss?’ He touched her shoulder, giving it a slight shake.
She did not do as much as twitch. Her skin looked thin and far too white, her lips tinged blue.
Reaching over the side of the lifeboat, he scooped his arms underneath her and lifted her out.
Her head rolled back. One arm fell limp at her side. She was heavy, but he suspected the weight had to do with yards of drenched cloth.
‘It’s all right,’ he whispered while easing her head up against his shoulder. ‘I’ve got you.’
The proper thing to do would be to rouse some woman from sleep and ask her assistance.
But then, proper hardly mattered in a life-and-death situation, and instinct warned him that her situation was desperate. His quarters were all the way up on the next deck, but the room would still be warm from the fire he had only recently banked. It would not take much to get a good blaze going.
‘Hold on, angel.’ Her lips were near enough to his ear that he ought to have felt warmth pulsing from them, but did not.
Without a second to be spent rousing a helpful woman or finding a proper room, he ran. His feet nearly slipped out from under him a time or two when the deck jerked unexpectedly.
* * *
It seemed an hour, but could only have been minutes before he carried her into his room and kicked the door closed behind him.
The space was warm, but not nearly warm enough.
What to do first? Building up the fire was urgent, but so was getting her out of her wet clothes. No matter how hot the flames, heat would not penetrate her icy garments.
Since he could not lay her down on the bed without soaking the mattress, he went down on his knees in front of the stove. He gathered her close with one arm, opened the stove door with the other. He stirred the coals with a poker. A few weak flames came to life. He added fuel, gave a great sigh of relief when the fire blazed.
If his fingers felt half-numb with cold, he did not want to imagine her condition. Her very bones must be chilled. He feared she was slipping away even as he held her.
This might well be the only gown she owned, but he ripped it from her without a care for the fabric. There was not a second to be lost in fumbling with buttons.
He stripped the clothes from her, then tossed them to the corner of the room—perhaps they could be mended, but he had not been careful, only fast.
Rising, he held her tight and brought her up with him. Carefully, he laid her down on the bed, then covered her with a sheet. Gathering the two blankets heaped at the foot of the bed, he laid them over the stove to warm them up.
‘Hurry up, damn you,’ he muttered to the flames and the wool, as if cursing at them would speed the heating.
There! One was hot, so he ripped away the sheet and tucked the blanket all around her.
If only she would moan or shiver, if only her eyes would move beneath her pale lids.
As soon as the second blanket was heated through, he traded it for the one he had just put on her.
On and on he went like this. He had no idea how long he repeated the process, but it seemed a very long time.
At last she made a tiny sound—a quiet groan.
‘Come on, angel. Listen to my voice, come towards it.’
What he ought to do was summon the physician he kept on staff, but it would mean leaving the lady alone.
It was still too risky for that. She needed warmth, constant and steady heat to bring her around.
Rees was warm. The exertion of caring for the lady had him sweating.
Body to body provided the best and most constant source of heat.
Because his clothing was still damp, he stripped down to his small clothes. He tucked a new warm blanket about and under her so that when they touched, it would not quite be skin to skin.
It wasn’t proper to be this close to her, but neither was it proper to let her die.
Easing on to the cot, he lay down beside her and hugged her close.
Even through the wool blanket the shock of her cold skin against his chest nearly made him recoil. Instead he hugged her tighter, briskly rubbing her arms.
While he did his best to protect her modesty, when it came down to it, they were sharing a bed with no vows spoken to sanctify it.
There would be repercussions for this, but with a life at stake, her life—for some reason, he had been drawn to her from the first when he spied her through the glass—he would deal with whatever came after.
‘Think about a blazing fire,’ he whispered close to her ear. ‘Summertime and warm breezes.’
Perhaps the suggestion of heat would somehow help. ‘Do you enjoy picnics in the sunshine? Walking in the park with it beating down on your head?’
After a time, he thought that her arm did not feel as icy as it had. Maybe her lips were losing the blue tint. He touched them with his thumb, hoping to add some heat and see them grow pinker.
There was not much he could do other than wait and see what happened. Hopefully by dawn he would be able to leave her long enough to bring tea and the doctor.
He did not allow himself to drift off to sleep in the event she woke, or in the event she did not.
The latter did not bear thinking.
This stranger in his arms was going to become his wife, just as soon as she was coherent enough to see the need and agree to it.
Honour dictated it to be so.
How would she react to the news? What kind of life would they have, for that matter?
He could not even imagine since he knew nothing about her other than that she was willing to give away her passage to a desperate mother. She must be selfless, or at the very least exceptionally kind.
There were men of his station who would know less of their brides than that.
And there was something he did know about her, knew quite intimately. Something he would not allow himself to dwell upon until they were properly wed.
All this was going to be a stunning surprise to her. One moment she had taken refuge in a lifeboat and the next—well, she would be wedding a man she’d never met.
Entering a marriage she had no choice in was bound to be distressing, but nothing about this could be helped. The pair of them were sharing his bed. The fact that she was not in any way consenting to it did not change the outcome for either of them.
He slid his open palm over the blanket, hoping to heat the wool even further. He was acquainted with the form of her limbs far better than he had a right to be.
When a man knew the shape of the arch of a woman’s foot and the curve of her calf—if he’d memorised the way her hip curved under the blanket—he was quite obliged to marry her.
By no misbehaviour on her part—or on his, to be honest—this lovely lady had been compromised even though his intention in lying down with her had not been seduction, but to save her life.
For all that it mattered.
The reality was, here they were. People were going to know it. Salacious
tales had a life all their own. Rather mysteriously, Rees had always believed, gossip seemed to just know things.
He would not shirk his duty towards the woman sharing his bed.
And it could not be denied that marriage to this stranger would be a great boon to him.
When he returned home already wed, his engagement to Bethany Mosemore would be voided.
He would not be forced to ruin his brother’s life by marrying the woman Wilson loved. Of course, he would not have been put in the position of doing so had his brother and Bethany not kept their feelings for each other a secret.
There would be a great scandal over it all once he returned home, but better that than his family in despair.
For all that he knew nearly nothing about the woman he embraced, something—a gut feeling—told him she would be a better match for him than Miss Mosemore would be even if she were not in love with his brother.
And, of equal importance, a better mother to his twin daughters.
Had this angel not emerged from behind the crates holding that little girl’s hand? That had to mean she liked children.
It could mean nothing else.
* * *
Voices.
Madeline heard conversation that she did not believe was from her imagination. The vague, quiet voices coming to her in the moment were feminine.
But there had been another voice, one from her imagination that had been masculine. In her dreams it had spoken to her of heat—had described sunshine and roaring fires in great hearths. That voice, as she recalled the fantasy, had felt hot where it brushed her cheek.
As dreams went, it was quite—odd! Deliciously, scandalously odd.
The last lucid thought she could recall before this still-dreamlike moment was that she was dying and would never be able to tell Grandfather how bitterly sorry she was for betraying him as she had.
And now here she was, warm as toast while listening to voices whispering over her.
Soft flannel caressed her skin. Odd that, since she did not recall being in possession of soft flannel—or in possession of anything come to that.
‘It’s a wonder she survived,’ uttered a man’s voice. The speaker seemed to be sitting beside the bed. He was holding her hand.
She tried to open her eyes to see who it was, but her lids felt sealed.
Was he speaking of her? Probably, since she had not expected to and nothing was really making any sense in the moment.
‘I’d like to know how you pulled her through. What technique did you use?’
‘I simply warmed her as best I could. That’s the whole of it.’
Funny, that last voice sounded familiar even though there was no reason for it to. She knew no one aboard the ship except for the family using her ticket and the young man who had shared his lunch.
The thought of the bread she’d eaten made her stomach turn in an unpleasant way.
It was true that she’d met the Captain, but he hadn’t spoken to her enough that she would recognise his voice. And there was the man who had directed her to the dining room. His voice had been—
‘But she hasn’t come round yet?’ The hand that squeezed hers had a gentle, caring touch.
‘No, not as much as lifted an eyelid.’
Now would be the time to lift it, if she was able. In that moment she could not as much as moan.
Whose voice was that? Familiar and yet not. Oddly, it calmed her, warmed her. She desperately wanted to know whom it belonged to.
‘I believe, Dr Raymond, it is time to remove the lady to more suitable quarters,’ a woman’s voice said and not without censure.
Oh, dear, what unsuitable place was she currently occupying?
Wherever it was, she was still aboard the ship. Her queasy stomach was not mistaken in that.
‘Not yet,’ said the man holding her hand—Dr Raymond it had to be. ‘She’s done well here and I recommend she not be moved.’
Thank the good Lord. Moving anywhere in the moment seemed quite beyond her. Perhaps when she could manage to lift an eyelid, then she might be moved to more ‘suitable’ quarters.
For now she wanted to drift back to sleep. To hide awhile from seasickness and maybe listen again to that other comforting voice.
As confused as she was about things, Madeline thought the voice belonged to the person who must have rescued her from the lifeboat. Perhaps this was his room and that was why the woman rightly thought it was unsuitable for her to be here.
But where was the poor fellow sleeping? She prayed it was not in a life raft.
As soon as she recovered, and she now thought she might, she would find Grandfather and, once he forgave her, she would ask to have the generous fellow compensated for giving up his space.
Growing drowsy without ever having fully woken, she heard the women’s voices again. They seemed distant and displeased, although she could not tell why. Broken words came to her while she drifted down.
Common—not to be trusted, was it? Or trussed-up? Not a gentleman or a janitor.
Nothing made a bit of sense except falling asleep. The last thing she had any awareness of was of her hand being held.
Funny, how the texture of the hand holding hers changed. It was rougher now than before—the length of the fingers longer and the breadth of the palm wider.
‘Sleep now, angel.’ Ah, that comforting voice again. But perhaps she was already asleep and this was all a part of the dream. ‘We will discuss things in the morning. It will all be set right tomorrow.’
Bread. It was the last thing she saw before drifting off, or deeper. A loaf floated on the air between where she stood on deck and the entrance to the steerage dining room.
* * *
It was slightly after daybreak but hard to recognise the dawn because of dark clouds pressing the sea.
Walking towards the Captain’s office, Rees swore the grey sky leached into the ocean, made them look like one dreary expanse where there was no visible horizon.
He rapped smartly on the door, hoping the man was alone. It would not be easy to explain why a fellow from the fire room had left the furnaces to visit the ship’s Captain.
The door opened, letting out a whoosh of welcome heat and the scent of rich, dark coffee.
‘Good day, my lord.’ Captain Collier stood to one side by way of inviting him in. ‘Is something amiss? You look rather stormy.’
And why would he not look stormy? A man of his employ had left a helpless woman to the elements!
‘I am rather—more than rather.’
‘You’ve heard of the empty vessel, I assume. I only just discovered it myself.’
‘What vessel?’
The Captain indicated an empty chair with a nod of his head while pouring another cup of coffee, then handing it to Rees.
‘One of the men you hired to keep a lookout found an empty flask near the fire room. He asked around about it, but no one admitted knowing anything about it.’
‘They would not, I imagine.’ Rees stood up. The delicious bitterness of the coffee turned suddenly sour and he set the mug on the table. ‘Perhaps in the past drinking while on duty was overlooked. It will not be now.’
‘It might not have been a crew member. A passenger, perhaps, who wandered below decks so as not to be seen imbibing? I suggest we find the woman who tried to sneak on board.’ Collier pursed his mouth so tightly that his heavy grey moustache covered his bottom lip. ‘A stowaway is always the first we must suspect.’
‘The one you abandoned to fend for herself with an Atlantic storm brewing?’
‘Abandoned?’ Collier also rose. ‘I hardly did that. As pretty as she is, I imagine she found a place to sleep.’
‘She did, in fact—with me.’
‘I see. Well, you can trust that your private affair will not spread beyond this room. Just beware, my
lord, a pretty face is the last to be suspected of wrongdoing.’
Heat pulsed in Rees’s chest, rolled in an angry flush up his neck.
‘I find it odd that she sought you out,’ Collier continued, tugging at his ear and apparently unaware of Rees’s ire. ‘I would venture that she knows who you are and—’
‘She did not seek me. I found her near death from exposure in a lifeboat.’ Rees clenched his fists behind his back. The last thing he needed to do was pummel the only Captain he had to man this ship.
At this, the Captain did have the good grace to look stunned.
‘I—I thought...’ The Captain sat down on his chair with a thud. ‘Why would she think that was a proper place?’
‘Why did you not find her one, Captain? As a soul aboard this ship she was your responsibility!’
He gulped several times. ‘I hope—that is—did she survive?’
‘Her death will not be on your conscience. I cannot say the same for her future happiness.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that you will report to my cabin at nine o’clock this evening to officiate my marriage to her.’
‘But, Lord Glenbrook! The woman is a commoner. I cannot help but wonder if she has sought you out for your title. Perhaps it is the reason she stowed away.’
He had assumed his Captain to be a smart fellow, but had he not heard a word of this conversation?
‘I hope you are more observant than it appears, Captain. Did you not notice earlier that the woman was being pursued by a man before she boarded? That even with that she gave away her ticket to someone else?’
The Captain stared dumbly at the wall past Rees’s shoulder, then the ceiling.
‘I’ll expect you promptly at nine.’
Rees stepped outside, took a deep breath of cold salty air before heading down to the belly of the ship.
What he ought to do was go back to his cabin, inform the lady of her destiny, but he still had a full day’s work in the boiler room.
If someone was drinking on their shift they might be inattentive to what they were doing. An accident could happen—an explosion would cripple the ship, cripple it in the middle of the ocean.